Pentagon Portrayed As Villain In Soviet Challenger Reports

March 16, 1986|By Peter Adams of The Sentinel Staff

The Soviet view of the Challenger explosion has been a mixture of reverence for the deaths of the seven astronauts and stern warnings to the United States that the militarization of space can lead only to more tragedies.

Through the pages of Pravda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Communist Party, Russians have received short, largely incomplete and sometimes inaccurate accounts of the Jan. 28 accident and the subsequent findings of the presidential commission investigating the explosion.

The day after Challenger was destroyed, Pravda published a three- paragraph, front-page message of condolence from General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. After that, news accounts remained short and terse.

In the Pravda coverage two clear villains emerge: the Pentagon and what the paper describes as ''commercial interests.''

In one unbylined dispatch by the Soviet wire service Tass, dated Feb. 19, a headline asked, ''Who is guilty: technology or politics?''

The answer, according to Tass, was that ''the tragedy occurred . . . as a result of attempts to force more flights for military and commercial interests.'' Quoting testimony from the presidential commission, the Tass writer said there had been attempts to ''streamline and economize'' the shuttle operation to accommodate more commercial and military flights.

On Feb. 17 another Tass dispatch reported from a presidential commission hearing that, ''in the opinion of experts . . . commercial and military interests harmed the security of the ship and cosmonauts by forcing more flights.''

Pravda first mentioned shuttle contractors by name Feb. 7. Contractors are described as ''American monopolies'' and have taken much of the blame from Soviet commentators.

For example, a Feb. 7 Tass article mentions that ''representatives of the corporations Rockwell International and Martin Marietta testified they saved money by reducing the thickness of the walls of the two solid rocket boosters.'' Neither Rockwell nor Martin Marietta is responsible for the thickness of booster rocket casings.

The Pentagon comes out in Pravda as a main villain behind the tragedy. Where Pravda mentions the U.S. military, it is usually followed by dire warnings that President Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative -- known to Americans and Russians as Star Wars -- will set the stage for far worse tragedies in space. The plan calls for putting anti-ballistic missile defense weapons into space.

While a Tass dispatch from Washington Feb. 1 reported salvaging efforts off the coast of Florida, the article closed with the prediction that if the American space program's ''goals are to put lasers in orbit for the Star Wars program, this will lead to a more terrible consequence than the Challenger catastrophe.''

In another Tass article, the Soviet correspondent wrote that the ''tragedy on Cape Canaveral is a serious lesson.'' And in still another, on Feb. 11, Tass wrote that, ''even as fragments of Challenger are raised from the sea . . . the U.S. administration continues to play with the future of its children by continuing the arms race.''

Loren Graham, a professor of Soviet science and technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the Challenger explosion to the Soviets ''falls perfectly into the Marxist interpretation of the world. Soviet propaganda has always emphasized the nefarious influence of military and commercial interests in the United States, and here's a case where they have something that's close to the truth.''

There is little mention of the Challenger crew in any of the Pravda articles, and no photographs have appeared in the Soviet press. The names of the crew members usually are mentioned with brief descriptions, such as ''Judith Resnik, woman-cosmonaut; Ellison Onizuka, physicist, specialist in lasers; and Christa McAuliffe, teacher.''

On Feb. 6 another unbylined Tass dispatch from New York had this headline: ''There were no chances to escape.'' Pravda quoted a number of American sources, including The New York Times and Newsweek, as having stated that the astronauts had no warning that the craft was in trouble.

In a rare instance of writing colorfully about the United States, Pravda reporter G. Vassileyev described Florida on Jan. 30 as ''the sunshine and orange state.'' Usually any mention of U.S. states or cities in the Soviet press carries no description.

Vassileyev also gave the only colorful description in Pravda of the actual explosion -- a ''fireball in the sky . . . One of the spaceship's rockets zig- zagged'' through the sky, and ''fragments began to fall to the ocean.''

Graham said the Soviet television news program Vremya showed Russian viewers the American video footage of the shuttle explosion. And the Soviet press did give itself a pat on the back with mention from ABC television that ''the Soviet Union was one of the first to commiserate with regards to the tragedy.''

Nicholas Johnson, a Soviet space analyst with Teledyne Corp. in Colorado Springs, Colo., said he ''detected genuine sympathy by the Russians. Cosmonauts are held in high esteem.'' And he said Russians are not immune from space tragedy themselves. The deaths of three Soyuz-11 cosmonauts in 1971 are still fresh in their minds.

He also said the Soviets, in launching a new generation space station this month, have not taken advantage of the Challenger explosion. In fact, Pravda accounts of the Mir space station have not mentioned the U.S. space program.